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Science: The 21st Century Brain by Steven Rose

THE 21ST CENTURY BRAIN: Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mindby Steven Rose

Cape £20 pp344

In a California courthouse in 1978 the jury in a murder case was presented with a bizarre item of evidence. Dan White, a former police officer, had walked into City Hall, San Francisco, and shot dead mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. But White was found guilty of nothing more than involuntary manslaughter after the jury accepted a plea that he had eaten on the morning of the incident a large number of “sugar-ice” Twinkie cakes. The sugar overload affected his brain chemistry, argued the defence, making an automoton of their client. It became known as the Twinkie Defence and the relationship between brain chemistry and responsibility would never be the same again.

In the 1970s, neuroscience and descriptions of the relationship between the brain and its chemistry were still, relatively speaking, in